Walk

Where the gloomy prison of the Tombs now stands, there was a lake of crystal water, overhung by towering trees. Its silence and solitude were disturbed only by the cry of the water-fowl which disported upon its surface, while its depths sparkled with the spotted trout. The lake emptied into the Hudson river by a brook which rippled over its pebbly bed, along the present line of Canal street. This beautiful lake was fed by large springs and was sufficiently deep to float any ship in the navy. Indeed it was some time before its bottom could be reached by any sounding line.
Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam by John S. C. Abbott - Project Gutenberg

I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

In New York the sun reaches everyone at the hour of the day appointed by their position in the grid pattern, weather blows in from every side, but one can go for days (weeks, years) without being aware of the shape of the natural world around one. You can forget entirely about topography (and for that matter, history) in New York City, but it is there, at the end of every street.